I decided enough was most certainly enough. There were probably plenty of circumstances in which dancing around the Charleston Harbor with an escapee from a Sandman comic would be fun, but I was attached, and I had a job to do. So instead of going into my usual witty repartee, or even growling out a few manly threats, I just picked the girl up by her belt and jumped backward.
I counted on her hanging on to my arm, and that was a good guess. The second my feet left the wood of the pier, her deathtrap on my bicep tightened to almost painful levels. We hit the water with a splash, and her strength instantly dropped to what I’d expect from a ninety-pound woman who tops out at maybe five feet in shoes.
We popped up to the surface instantly, and I started treading water. The tide was in, so I had to swim a few yards to stand comfortably, but I dragged my witchy attacker along with me. Her magic disrupted by the salt water, she was just a bedraggled twentysomething girl who tangled up with somebody way out of her league. I held onto her belt despite her beating on my chest and shoulder with ineffective punches.
“If you don’t stop that, I’m going to knock you out,” I said under my breath. “Then I’ll tell everybody you’re my niece, you fell over the rail being an idiot teenager, and I’ll carry you back to my hotel over my shoulder. Then we’ll have a very unpleasant conversation where nobody can see you, and I’ll make sure nobody can hear you scream.”
She stopped struggling and opened her mouth to yell, but I was anticipating that very thing. “No, Delilah!” I shouted. “Don’t panic, I’ve got you!” I wrapped one arm around her throat, making it look like I was having trouble dragging her to the shore, and tightened my grip on her carotid arteries. A few seconds later, she was out. I released the hold and threw one of her arms over my shoulder, wrapping my arm around her waist and lifting her into a perfect Weekend at Bernie’s drunk friend carry pose. We got a few odd looks as I hauled her back to the King Charles, wrestled her into the elevator, and then down the hall to my room.
I dropped her in the center of the king bed and walked back to the door. I traced my finger around the door frame and stepped back. A whispered “silencio” insured that we wouldn’t be overheard, and a quick “sonjunctare” fused the wood of the door to the frame. Nobody was getting in or out of that room without a fire axe or a chainsaw until I wanted them to.
I grabbed a fresh set of clothes and went into the bathroom to change. The last thing I needed was some kid waking up from being choked out while I’m bare-assed naked five feet away. I walked back out rubbing my head with a towel just as she started to stir. I dug through my suitcase for a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and threw them on the bed next to her.
“Here’s some dry clothes. You might as well go into the bathroom and dry off,” I said as she looked around the room in a panic.
The girl opened her mouth to scream, then closed it with a snap. I nodded. “Yes, I warded the room against sound. So why don’t you go get changed and we can sit and talk about this like civilized people?”
She gathered up the clothes and went into the bathroom. A few minutes later, she came back out, rubbing her own head with a towel. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t carry any women’s underwear around, and anything that would have been lying around my apartment wouldn’t fit you anyway. My girlfriend is full-grown.”
“Fuck you, sorcerer,” she said, sharing with me the accompanying hand gesture to let me know that I was number one in her book.
“You could be a little nicer to the guy who saved your life,” I said.
“You’re also the only person who’s threatened my life today,” she shot back.
“Then obviously I’m the first person you’ve talked to today, given your winning fucking personality.”
“I don’t have to take this shit,” she said. Her eyes glowed purple again, and she raised her right hand.
I stood up from my chair, crossed the ten feet between us in less than half a second, and backhanded her to the ground. Then I reached down and grabbed a handful of dark hair and yanked her back to her feet. This time I picked her up by her throat.
“Let’s get this very clear, little girl. I am not a nice person. I am not the guy who takes a bunch of shit and finally gets fed up enough to lash out. I am the guy who takes zero shit, gives zero fucks, and knows every incantation needed to open up a portal to the sixth circle of Hell and throw your scrawny ass through it. So unless you really think you’re in my fucking league, I’d suggest you lay off the fireworks before I lose my fucking patience.”
If looks could kill, I’d have been killed, reanimated, and killed a couple more times. After about ten seconds, which must have felt like an eternity to the one hanging by her throat in my hand, she let go of the power she’d summoned, and the purple light faded. I tossed her over to the bed, and she bounced clear across it to the floor.
“Sorry,” I said. “I actually didn’t mean to throw you that far. You seem to have a way with me.” I walked back to the one chair in the room and sat down.
The girl got to her knees on the other side of the bed, still looking daggers at me. She stood up and walked over to sit on the end of the bed in front of me, just out of arm’s reach.
“Good,” I said. “Now who the fuck are you?”
6
She didn’t speak for a long time, then she finally took a deep breath and said, “My name is Arianne. I…protect the city.”
“Like Batman?” I asked.
“Kinda, except I only worry about mystical threats. There are plenty of ways that people are defended against mundane attacks. The kinds of threats I deal with are a little more…”
“Complicated?” I offered.
“Sure, we can use that one. I deal with complicated threats to my city.”
“What made you think I was complicated?” I asked. I ran down a mental checklist in my head. I hadn’t cast any spells since leaving Charlotte, hadn’t opened up my Sight to the magical world, hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary except…motherfucker.
I pulled out my phone and set it on the table. I didn’t have to press any buttons, I knew the ethereal bastard was snooping. “Okay, Dennis, time to fess up,” I said to the phone.
“You know you have to dial those things, right?” Arianna said from her seat on the bed.
I glared at her. “It’s complicated,” I said, keeping with what was apparently the word of the day.
“You also know they’re not waterproof?”
“Mine is. I’ve learned to protect my tech.” I wasn’t kidding. Magic is bad enough on delicate equipment, but with the number of times I’ve been burned, drowned, buried, or defenestrated, I caught on to the need to spend some resources on keeping my gear alive. That way it can keep me alive.
“What spell is that?” the girl asked. For the first time, she looked like she thought I might actually be competent.
I almost hated to burst her bubble. “It’s called an Otterbox,” I replied, gesturing to the heavy-duty protective case around my phone. “Now quit hiding in there and answer me, Dennis.”
“Oh come on, Harker, don’t be a dick about this.” The digitized image of Dennis “Sparkles” Bolton appeared on the screen. At least he wasn’t wearing his unicorn face this time. Instead, he looked like his normal moon-faced ginger self, perennially twenty-two going on fourteen with tight curly hair and about three hairs on his chin. A spattering of freckles dotted his grinning cheeks, and he used the magic of computer imaging to make his green eyes a blazing emerald.
“Why should this be any different, Dennis? I’m a dick about everything. Now why did you sic the Junior Adventurer on me?” The girl on the bed gave me the finger, and I returned the gesture.
“Arianne’s good, Harker. I thought she could be useful. Especially since you’re flying solo on this one.” He wasn’t wrong. Luke was back home overseeing the reconstruction of his new house, a process made difficult by his need to schedule construction meetings after sunset. Flynn wasn’t exactly in the dog
house with her bosses at the police department, but she was on a pretty short leash nonetheless. The other Shadow Council folks were out chasing angels of their own or trying to pick up the pieces of their mundane lives. That left me on my own.
“I’m tracking down one…person, Dennis. I think I can handle it on my own. You know I’ve handled cases without backup before, right?”
“Oh, I remember. I think I’m the prime example of how sideways shit can go when you don’t have your usual support system behind you.” That stung a little, but only because it was true. Dennis was a casualty of me chasing a demonic serial killer and not being fast enough to figure out the murderer’s identity. He was sacrificed in a ritual to open a doorway to Hell, and I managed to transfer his consciousness into the internet, only partially on purpose.
“So she’s supposed to be Batgirl or something?” I asked.
“That’s sexist,” Dennis said.
“Go fuck yourself,” Arianne said at the same time.
“Is that to me or him?” I asked. “I don’t care. Just shut up for a minute while the grownups talk.”
“Oh, one hundred percent go fuck yourself,” the girl said, standing up from the bed. I put a hand on her chest, just under her throat, and pushed her back down.
“Sit. Stay.”
“One thousand percent go fuck yourself,” she said. She sprang up with her fists clenched at her sides. She was ready to go.
I wasn’t. I put my hand on the top of her head this time and pressed down. She fell back to the bed, and I pointed a finger at her. “I said stay.”
She looked up at me and saw something in my face that made her pause. I was getting pretty irritated, so there might have been a little bit of “I can and will turn you into a toad” written across my forehead.
“What’s the plan, Dennis? Do I take her under my wing, or just use her as cannon fodder?” I asked.
“I just thought it might be helpful to have someone who knows the town’s players, magically speaking. So I sent Arianne a few simply encoded texts and emails with your picture, saying that a powerful and dangerous wizard was coming to her town, and I thought she might want to know about it.”
“So you tell her I’m dangerous, and you expect her to just jump right in and work with me? Yeah, that seems to make sense.”
“Okay, it might not have been the best way to go about it, but the end result was good, right? I mean, you guys are together now, and you can figure out how to find Gabriel and his book and then work on getting Glory her wings back, right?”
“Wait, what?” Arianne said. “What is he talking about? Gabriel? A book? Wings? Are you messing around with angels? Because I’m not messing around with angels. Angels are assholes.”
I thought back to Barachiel, the angel behind all the shit in Atlanta, and couldn’t find it in my heart to disagree. “You’re not wrong,” I said. “A lot of angels are assholes. But there’s one who’s not, and she needs my help. The only way I can help her is to find a bunch of other angels and get them to go back to Heaven and do their jobs. From what we can figure, one of them might be here in Charleston.”
“Which one?”
“Gabriel,” I said.
“The Archangel Gabriel?”
“That’s the one,” Dennis said from the phone.
“Fuck that,” the girl said. “I’m out of here, and you need to be out of here, too. You don’t just need to be out of this hotel room, you need to be out of my city. I’ll give you until nightfall. Then I’m coming back with a bunch of my sisters, and we’re going to make sure you’re gone. We don’t need any trouble with angels around here.” She stood up, and I blocked her path to the door.
“Get out of the way.”
“Sit down.”
“Get out of the way.” I hoped eventually she’d realize that the glowy eyes thing wasn’t impressing me, but apparently, we hadn’t gotten there yet.
“Please sit down, and stop trying to look badass. You’re maybe twenty years old, and I’ve forgotten more spells that you’ve cast in your whole life.” My powers of persuasion being what they are, that went over like a lead balloon. She shoved her hands out at me, and a bolt of pure purple energy shot out toward my face.
I closed my eyes against the glare and tapped my belt buckle. A small pop sounded under the crackle and hiss of magical energy, and the purple energy dissipated around me.
“What the fuck was that?” the girl asked.
“It’s a dampener,” I replied. “A little piece of obsidian set into the buckle of my belt. I invoke the right spell, and the stone sends out what amounts to a magical EMP, knocking out any active spells in a quarter mile and sucking away all the magical mojo for a couple hours.”
“But that kills your magic, too!” The girl obviously decided that meant I was going to be old and slow, so she tried to dart past me to the door.
I might be old, but I’m far from slow. I caught her around the waist and flung her back to the bed. “Stop that,” I said.
“How did you do that? Your magic should be dead, too.”
“It is. That wasn’t magic. That was just me being a badass.” I gave her my most annoying grin, and she just gave me the finger again. I was really getting tired of seeing this kid’s middle finger. I might have to feed it to her before this whole mess was finished.
“So what now, you just gonna tie me up and keep me in your hotel room?”
“Nah, I’m not into that Fifty Shades shit. Plus, I’m seeing somebody. The way I see it, we’ve got two options. You can either help me, or you can leave me alone. Despite my kinda dead friend’s ideas, I’m pretty sure I can find one angel and one book and get them back to Charlotte on my own. So if you want to walk out of here and leave me the hell alone, that’s fine.”
“Sold,” she said, standing up again. I dispelled the binding holding the door closed with the wave of a hand, and she rushed toward it.
I got in her way again. “You can go. I just want to be perfectly clear about one thing: I am not here to fuck with the local witches. I do not want to fuck with the local witches. If given the choice, I will not fuck with the local witches. But if you get in my way, I will rain hellfire down upon you the likes of which you have never seen.”
That got her blood up again, of course. “Who the fuck do you think you are, John Fucking Constantine?”
“Kid, I make John Constantine look like John Lennon. I’m Quincy Fucking Harker, and I’ve been hunting big nasties since your grandparents were babies. Now I’m only going to be here for a few days, then you can get back to dancing around naked under the full moon and explaining to the mundanes why love potions don’t really work.”
Her eyes got big, and she took a step back. I guess she’d heard of me. “You’re Quincy Harker?”
“Yeah, I thought I’d be better looking, too.”
She didn’t say anything, just ducked her head and bolted past me out the door. I closed it behind her and threw the deadbolt, then walked over to sit at the small table where I had my phone sitting.
“So…that happened,” I said.
“Yeah,” Dennis’ voice came from the speaker.
“Looks like I’m famous.”
“Not in a good way.”
“Nope, she didn’t even offer to sleep with me.”
“You’re too old for her.”
“I’m over a hundred years old, Sparkles. I’m too old for everybody.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Think I oughta wait around here for her to come back?”
“What makes you think she’s coming back? I might not have eyes, but it sure sounded like she hauled all kinds of ass out of there.”
“Oh, she did. But she’ll be back.”
“A lot of people would think that’s a misogynist attitude, that the woman can’t get along without you.”
“Those people would be stupid. I don’t have any attitude, just proof.”
“What kind of proof?”
“She left
her keys on the bed with her clothes.”
7
She didn’t come back in the next hour, so I went down the street and got myself an early dinner. I just ducked into a little English-themed pub, had some fish and chips that were good enough to remind me of my childhood, and downed a couple pints of Guinness. The thick stout and the vinegar on my chips were almost enough to make it feel like home, except the place was far too clean, nowhere near smoky enough, and I couldn’t smell goat or horse shit anywhere. It’s easy to romanticize my upbringing if you never smelled it.
The sun was setting when I walked out of the pub, so I meandered over to King Street and decided to start my investigation on familiar ground. The sign for Trifles & Folly glowed with magic even without my Sight open, so I ducked in the shop, looking around to see who was running things these days.
“Good evening,” a trim young man with crisp creases in his pants and nice cufflinks called out to me from behind the counter. “Welcome to Trifles & Folly. Is there anything we can help you find today?”
We were the only two people I could see in the shop, a well-appointed antique shop with a reputation in the occult circles as the place to go to find magical trinkets. The proprietress, Cassidy, was psychokinetic, and she worked with a group of people to take dangerous artifacts off the street and either lock them away somewhere safe or deal with any malevolence surrounding the stuff. I’d met her a few times, but we tried to stay out of each other’s way.
I didn’t know this guy, though, so I wasn’t sure how much I could say to him. “I’m looking for a book,” I said.
“Well, we don’t do much with rare and antiquated books,” he replied. “There are several excellent used bookstores in town, including Harbor Books over on East Bay, and Battery Tales up on St. Phillips.”
“This would be a ‘special’ book. The kind your boss often takes a particular interest in,” I said, hoping that if he didn’t know the deal, that he at least had enough of a clue to know that Cassidy sometimes dealt in weird stuff and would give her a call.
Devil Inside: A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Urban Fantasy Novella Page 4